Ed Tech Leadership Resources

Gradecam: This is a great tool for assessing what your students have learned. It saves you time on grading multiple choice answers and you can do it at your own desk as long as you have internet and a webcam. You don't have to go to the teachers lounge to use the machine. It is also a very flexible tool. You can set it up to allow for multiple versions of the test. I use that a lot since I use a different version of my test for each class. The reason our school started using this is that the machine to grade multiple choice questions only grades tests that have four choices. However on the AP test they always have five choices and we model our tests after the AP test. So that means it is a useless machine. However this site can allow you to choice how many choices to provide. You can also have AB as answer if you would like. What I find really cool is that you can tie questions to state objectives. So you can track how a student is doing on one objective. This ties to the NETS*S standard of research and information fluency. The only thing I wish was that you could tie questions to AP objectives and many AP teachers have written the developers to make this change. However the item analysis you can do with the program is very helpful you can easily see which question or objective you need to reteach with your class. You can pilot this program for your school and save money on the program which ties into being a educational technology leader. However you get three months for free at first and you can get more when you refer teachers. So please follow my gradecam link to help a poor teacher out.

Class dojo: This is an app that you can use on an ipad or ipod. I plan on using it on my ipod during class next year. It can award or subtract points based on classroom behavior. It is a good way of including and defining classroom participation. I have listed a few categories I plan to use next year in this post. I am told that you can go to their site on you ipod and then bookmark it so it appears on your home screen so to allow the user to use it offline. The classrooms don't have wifi that my ipod can connect to and the internet does not always work in the classroom so I have to have this as plan B. I also want to be able to use it on my ipod so the computer has the lessons powerpoint running and I can keep track of participation on my ipod. I can walk around the room monitoring groups and award points as well. A coworker here started using it this year with his classes to encourage our students to always speak English in the classroom so that they can improve their English skills. It has worked great so far. After 6 weeks he looks at the point score online and awards them points based on that. I will play around with the app and make sure I can use it offline after the AP test is over.

Dropbox: Many of you have heard about dropbox and I just can't tell enough people how much I love it. This year it saved my bacon even more. My computer crashed several times this year because it is an old machine that I use at work here in China. However I was not stressed or freaking out. Everything important on my work computer was in dropbox. All the powerpoints, lesson plans, tests, quizzes, teaching resources, and copies of my gradebook were in my dropbox. Then I just reinstalled dropbox on my computer when I got it back from the school's IT department and everything was there. It is always in the cloud and you can't loose it. If you need to work on school stuff both at work and at home dropbox helps. My company has gotten paid accounts for a select few so they can upload resources and then share it with teachers across China. Now with just a click of a button I have a pile of resources which is super helpful as a new teacher. As my company has been doing more and more work using dropbox I have taught several of my coworkers how to use it. I have shown them how to share files with others when the files have been too large for an e-mail as well as how to use it in their day to day lives. Also if you want to put extra security on your dropbox than you can set up two step verification. I have an app on my ipod that sends randomly generated codes to me that I am required to enter when logging in. It adds another layer of protection. To learn how to set this up for your dropbox account read this post. You can do this for your g-mail account as well. You can read more about in my post here. You get 2 GB for free, but dropbox often does different promotion deals where you can earn free space. If you keep your eye out for different events you can gather up more free space. This is why I follow dropbox on twitter so I learn can learn about how to get free space. However if you follow my link I can get more, so please consider trying it out for the reasons I stated above.

Astrill: I personally use this service so that I am able to blog, use facebook, and dropbox here in China. These sites are restricted or blocked here in China. However this service provides access to other servers. If you wanted to access an educational video that was only on a British website that can not be accessed in America this may help with that. It does cost some money however I personally made room in my budget because I could not live without access to all of these wonderful resources. I paid extra for firewall protection so I could feel a little safer as well.

Download helper add on in firefox: I use this addon in firefox to help me download videos of the internet so I can show them in class. I imagine there are similar addons for chrome that do the same job, but this is the one I like and use. It is important that you have a plan B. This way if you download the video ahead of time you don't have to worry about the internet not working, loading problems, or ads. A three bubbled icon should appear in the toolbar at the top of firefox once you have installed it. Then if you are viewing a video online all you have to do is hit the three bubbled icon and it will start to download the video. I make sure I have a portable software to play the video as well which I will discuss down below.

portable apps site: I use this site for to download different apps onto my USB stick. In China the teachers move around the school and the students stay put. It is a bit opposite from the American system. However that means that I often have to install or have certain programs with me that the computer in the classroom does not have. These are the programs that I carry on my USB stick at all times and why. However you may want to go look over the categories of apps that they have to see what you can use. They have a wide variety that I think could be useful.

pdf reader: If the computer you are using for some reason does not have adobe reader or a similar program installed and you want to display a pdf then you are in trouble. I often run into this problem and that is why I started using this program/app so I can know for sure I have the software I need to display the file I want.

portable open office: This app is similar to the previous one. This is an open source program that can open any word, excel, and other document. I often use it when someone sends me a file that is saved in a version of word or excel that I don't have. I use the portable version so I can open any word or excel document I want even if the computer I am using does not have the software.

portable VLC player: This helps you play any video. It works with all video formats. So if you want to play a video in a classroom or at a conference and worry about the computer not being able to play a certain video format then bring this along on a USB stick. I use it all the time because I am not sure of what video software is available on the computers in the classrooms.

cooktimer: I use this all the time in my classroom. I put it up on the projector screen up front where the students can see it. This lets the students know how much time they have to finish an exam or activity. It makes the teacher and the students keep on track. It has some preset timer settings that you can use or you can put in a custom time. It simply counts down to zero and makes a loud buzzer noise once finished.

clamwin portable: This is a useful tool to keep viruses from being spread from computer to computer. I like to use dropbox as much as I can so that way I don't have to get a USB stick infected. Many of the computers I use here in China are riddled with viruses. I have a USB stick that I only use here at work that is cheap and I don't care about. Then I have a nice one that I only put into my own laptop which I constantly scan for viruses. However I often run this app over the computers in the classrooms as I teach. Then after each day I scan my USB stick for any viruses I picked up. It is quite helpful if you really have no choice, but to use a USB stick.

screenr: If I can't use download helper in firefox to download a video then I just record my screen as I play the video. I have run into this problem before. I also have used it when I didn't want to clutter a presentation with a bunch of links to resources I wanted to talk about. Instead I talked about how to use the resources over an image of my screen showing the resource and the link to it at the top of the video. The only down side to this site is that you can only record 5 minutes. However if you are using the video in the classroom you want to keep them short. If it is only a short segement of your presentation then it works. If you have longer parts you want to present then you just have to carefully plan and script your presentation. I like this service because if you don't want to talk to long and can easily segment your presentation then it is great. However 5 minutes is kind of short. I just heard about the screen recording service a colleague of mine uses which is screencast-o-matic. It is the same idea where you record your voice over a recording of whatever is on your screen. However this service gives you 15 minutes for free. The yearly subscription fee is pretty low at 15$ and that gets you a two hour limit. The paid account gets you other tools like editing and zoom effects. Although I know my students are going to stop paying attention at 15 minutes so that length is perfect and don't really need access to a two hour limit. So depending on how long you want to make the video you have a couple of options.

Google reader: This is the tool to I use to make information come to me. I keep up to date on new technologies this way and important news events. I follow some people on blogger and their posts come to me instead of me going to them. However saddly Google announced they were retring google reader. They said in their announcement that they knew it had many followers that would miss it, but they wanted to focus on developing a smaller amount of tools. So I need to find another RSS platform to read the blogs and other online content. I could never understand how to use RSS feeds, but google reader made it easy. All I had to do was hit a button to subscribe in either google reader or on the website. Then I would get notifications about new posts in google reader. However Google will let me download my information so that way I can easily transfer it to a new system and that way I don't need to remember who I followed. Here is a great article for some other options. I ended up trying Netvibes. While I was searching around for some help about how to customize my netvibes dashboard I ran across this great list of blogs. Now I just have to get a handle on using netvibes to follow those blogs if I want to. It is easy to add blogs and feeds to my netvibes because I added all of my feeds from google reader to netvibes. I can easily add any other blogs from that list or others I come across. However my account I set up came with some preloaded feeds and I don't know how to get rid of them. I want to keep some of them, but I don't want to be bombarded with too much. I want to have the essentials in my feeds. I read every post in my feed during down time at work or when I need a quick break, so I want it somewhat brief. The best solution I have found is not to use one of their popular dashboards but make my own. I put my world as the topic. It still loaded feeds into my dashboard, but it didn't load that many in. I just discovered that the best way to get rid of their preloaded feeds is to delete their preloaded tabs. It will delete all of the widgets or subscriptions that go into that tab, but since all the feeds are preloaded in this tab then you shouldn't worry. I just added my feeds from google reader and it looks like my old google reader. I am still figuring out how to scroll through stories and scroll through my feeds. You can make your netvibes public so other people can look at it and use it as a launching point. This is how one librarian is using it. Another talks about using it as a launch page or home page in this article. I think you could use it as a online portfolio in a sense to bring together your resources, blogs, and other online products. I read you can import delicious links which is way cool. I need to figure out how to do that. However I want this one for personal use and don't want to share what I am reading for entertainment. I might work on making a Netvibes portfolio that includes my blogs and other resources, but the blogs are a good starting point. I just recently figured how to add links to my blog so that my one blog links to my other two blogs. Now people can easily learn about my interests in educational technology and my teaching. Then if they want to read about hobbies or events in my life they can click the link to my personal blog. I really wanted the blogs separate  but then I also needed a way to link them together. So I added links to my other blogs onto each blog. I have tried using it all week so I can get used to it before google reader permanetly goes away. Netvibes worked well for awhile, but then I started having problems with stories loading. I am not sure if it is the fact I am in China or if it is a problem with the service. I will have to try using the site when my VPN is running to see if that helps. However google reader worked well with and without my VPN.

LaTeX/WinEdt: I use this to type up all of my exams and activities. I have heard that the equation editor in word is very cumbersome and hard to use. I have never tried since I learned to use this software. You need to know the code or commands for certain symbols, but most of them are straight forward. Their is a guide at the top to help you though. If you really don't know how to do something there are a lot of good help sites out there. This software is used to type up most math textbooks and academic papers. I learned how to use it when I got my degree in math and since I got used to using after four years I haven't wanted to teach myself how to use other software. If I taught in the states I think I would have students learn how to use this program after the AP test. They would have to type up some mathematical projects for me using the program. It would get them ready for college and be prepared to enter the academic math world. The software is free for thirty days and you can extend that. If you get sick of the program asking you to buy a license then you can purchase one for a pretty low rate. I will direct you to my old math professors site on directions about how to install since he has some good resources for getting started and he taught me how to use the program. I have had to occasionally re-install the program and when ever I do I go to his site because it has good clear directions on what to do which can be found on the top of the site. The site also includes some sample documents as example. Here is a good resource for trouble shooting and looking up how to do certain things. I have read through on occasion and always learn some new command to make my handouts ever more organized. When a colleague of mine was having trouble copying and pasting equations into a document he asked me what program I used. I showed him LaTeX, but that wasn't what he was looking for. LaTeX helps you type up an entire document. He just wanted one equation done in mathematical type. So after suggesting LaTeX he went and found an online site that ran LaTeX online. That way it produces just one equation in mathematical type that you can include in any document. You still need to know LaTeX commands and codes, but you can use the above wikibook link to look up anything you need to know.

Center for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC) at the University of Waterloo: This center was started by a few high school math teachers and then grew to become a much larger organization. They are based at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON, Canada. The center grew with the help from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. They site provides a lot of online resources. They have problem of the week which teachers can subscribe to and use to enhance their curriculum. They have lots of resources to support and run a computer science curriculum. They have old copies of past math competitions that can be used to enhance your curriculum. There is a bunch more that I have yet to explore. I am personally excited by the online Masters in Mathematics for Teachers. I think it will help bridge the gap between my advanced mathematics degree and the classroom. They offer courses about how to make calculus and geometry more student centered and inquiry based which sounds amazing. I want to eventually get the degree, but want to take some time off from classes so I can focus on my teaching.

PatrickJMT: I follow this guy on youtube and he has amazing videos. He teaches a lot of contact. He mostly has videos on upper level math topics, but he has a series of videos for pre-algebra. He has a link to his other resources for teachers on this page as well. I just discovered the links to his other pages and I was excited. I suggest downloading the videos using download helper add on that I talked about earlier in the post so that way you don't have to depend on the internet. I think you could also use these videos to flip the classroom and make students watch them before you teach the content. I will be using some of these videos to help students review before the AP test, but I use one video in class to demonstrate how to graph the derivative function based on the graph of the function. It is a great video since it means I don't have to practice drawing my graphs.

Ed703: Ed Tech Leadership Hour Log